{"id":6071,"date":"2013-03-14T00:53:30","date_gmt":"2013-03-14T04:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gornahoor.net\/?p=6071"},"modified":"2021-03-17T08:17:40","modified_gmt":"2021-03-17T12:17:40","slug":"on-the-human-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=6071","title":{"rendered":"On the Human Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nSt Gregory of Nyssa on the Human Soul<\/em>
\nBy John P. Cavarnos<\/strong>, Edited and Revised by Constatine Cavarnos<\/strong>
\n95 pp, Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies<\/a>
\nNOTE: This review will appear in two separate posts. This is part I.
\nClick here for Part II ⇒<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\nWe regard all knowledge as beautiful and precious, but one kind of it more so than another, either by reason of its exactness, or because it has reference to superior and more wonderful objects. On both these accounts we should naturally be led to place in the front rank the study of the soul. ~ Aristotle<\/strong>, On the Soul<\/em>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n\"Gregory<\/a>
\n<\/figure>\n

Originally published as a doctoral dissertation, this edition was revised for use by a more general audience. Since the fundamental goal of Christianity is the \u201csalvation of souls\u201d, it is curious that there was no systematic understanding of the soul until the efforts of St Gregory of Nyssa<\/strong>. Mr. Cavarnos points out:<\/p>\n

\nChristianity, being concerned above all with man\u2019s destiny and salvation, must inevitably undertake to explain the mystery of life. For the Christian that means more specifically the human soul.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Curiously, St Gregory turns to the great pagans of antiquity, in particular Plato<\/strong> and Aristotle<\/strong>, for his understanding of the soul. There are a few explanations that have been proposed by Gornahoor. The first is attributed to Julius Evola<\/strong>, who would regard this as the process of \u201crectification\u201d, i.e., the partial restoration of the Middle Ages to its pagan roots following the shock of primitive Christianity. Guido De Giorgio<\/strong>, on the other hand, would regard the two Romes — the Ancient and the Medieval — as two forms of the same tradition, the later a deepening of the earlier. Our preference is that St Gregory is giving us a guidebook to the soul, not a theory, and anyone who makes the efforts at self-knowledge will simply see that it is true.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Mr. Cavarnos falls prey to the modernist notion that St Gregory was merely making \u201cgood use of classical and contemporary material for giving form and expression to accepted Christian doctrines and concepts.\u201d Were that true, then why couldn\u2019t modern theories of the mind or soul be put to the same use? No, it is not a pragmatic concern for good usage, but whether the doctrine is true or not.<\/p>\n

Anthropology<\/h2>\n

Like the pagan philosophers, St Gregory conceived the cosmos as divided into two orders: the spiritual and rational over against the material and irrational. In his understanding of the purpose of man, St Gregory is closer to his Christian roots. Mr. Cavarnos summarizes:<\/p>\n

\nMan was created in the image and likeness of God so that he could partake of the divine nature and make it known to the rest of the creation. He is related to God by his endowment of the divine principle of reason, through which he knows God and imitates Him to attain to virtue and perfection.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So man is suspended between the two poles and is to be the link between them. Following Rene Guenon<\/strong>, we have referred to those poles as form and matter, or essence and existence. The former binds man with the divine and the latter with the subrational world. In his higher role, man possesses divine attributes such as life, reason, wisdom, and so on. Man is also a microcosm, so his self-knowledge relates to the knowledge of the cosmos by analogy.<\/p>\n

Nature of the Soul<\/h2>\n

St Gregory makes a useful distinction of his study. The metaphysics of the soul relate to the essence, origin, and destiny of the soul, and the psychology of the soul is concerned with determining, defining, and classifying the diverse faculties of the soul. This psychology is necessarily a phenomenology, since the soul can only be directed observed from the inside.<\/p>\n

Starting with the nature of the soul he claims that the soul is the principle that gives life to the body. That is, it animates<\/i> the body, from the Latin word anima<\/i> for soul. Immediately, this is the opposite of educated men today who believe, on the contrary, that the soul is a function, or epiphenomenon, of the body. Not so, and this is why Rene Guenon identifies the five fundamental preconditions for manifestation: space, time, form, matter, and life. Hence, there are both material forces and psychic forces in play, irreducible to each other. Evola makes use of this idea in his own doctrine of the degrees of race. Of course, these are the natural forces, which operate on the horizontal plane, and not the supernatural, or vertical, forces.<\/p>\n

St Gregory, like Plato, accepts the immortality of the soul as well as its simplicity. Mr. Cavarnos does not point this out, but this is analogous to the Roman idea of divine simplicity, which should be expected if the soul is truly the likeness of the divine. In this case, the human soul is chiefly identified with the rational, or intellectual, faculty; this faculty is therefore the ruling principle. Again, this is consistent with the ancient pagans and the Medieval tradition.<\/p>\n

Gregory brings up an excellent and very important point: the \u201cpassions\u201d are actually distinct from the soul, hence cannot be considered part of it. For Gregory, the soul is beautiful, which would preclude any ugliness. This means two things in practice:<\/p>\n